Florean Fortescue and the Ollivander's: 1971
by Whispering to the Winds
Summary: A short blurb prefacing the story Year One: An Eagle's Beginning. It's the Dark Lord's first rise and it's off to Hogwarts for the Diagon Alley shopkids. How have things changed with the attacks over the summer? Is this dark wizard another Grindewald? Marauder 'Verse.


_**Here is a short blurb on the story this prefaces:**_

**_**I am working on a project with my friend in the Harry Potter Marauder's 'Verse. I'm writing from a Ravenclaw/neutral perspective and she is following budding Death Eaters and the typecast they lived in during Voldemort's first rise. They run concurrent with the marauding boys in the same year. While they do interact via pranks, competitions, and classes, they are NOT main characters. The story isn't about them; it's about the rest of the Wizarding World's initial reaction to the guerrilla tactics of the Dark Lord until his defeat by the Boy-Who-Lived. Depending on how these go, we may expand it to a Hufflepuff perspective (me) and a Gryffindor's (likely one of Lily's unmentioned roommates) (my friend). That, of course, is dependent on us finishing the first bit; we have 8 full books following our current characters and their houses, with each chapter pretty well fleshed out. She has finished her first book, while I... I am very behind. I'm working on it, but I am an engineering student and my life=my homework all the studying all the time. Her and her poly-sci-ness... So much jealousy. So yeah! Depending on if my internship with an engineering firm comes through, the first book will be done in the next three months and we will start releasing a chapter a week after that while we start and finish the second one. These stories aren't really for the readers; they are the expression of the political plot bunnies living in our heads that always ask "but how did _that_ happen?" No one ever looks to see how business on the Alley changed, or how baby death eaters were brainwashed into thinking that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was the only way to succeed in their ambitions. That's what we want to know.**_**

**_**This is the beginning part of the first chapter from Florean Fortescue's POV.  
**_**

**Disclaimer: While the characterizations, most of the characters, and story line are mine, JKR owns the rest of it. I'm just borrowing it to explore Voldemort's first rise back in the 70's.**

**Florean Fortescue on the First Ride to Hogwarts**

"Oy! Ready to go Elisabeth?" sixteen year old Florean Fortesque XXI asked as he peeked in the front door of _**Ollivander's: Makers of Fine Wands Since 382 BC.**_ He stepped in a few steps to peer around a tottering stack of precariously balanced wand boxes down an aisle filled with haphazard piles of more wand boxes. The door whooshed shut behind him, shutting out the loud noises and business of Diagon Alley. He frowned into the silence and looked around.

Tall shelves lined the walls and made rows through the shop, an attempt to create a semblance of order. The floor was a contrast of brightly colored boxes and wheeling dust bunnies, catching light from the two cobwebby windows opening out to the rest of the Alley. Somewhere under the mess directly in front of the door lay a single counter and an ancient register. Next to the door and buried under even more wand packages and unboxed wands, two chairs sat. They were presumably for proud parents, impatient siblings, and waiting customers, but it was clear it had been a long time since the squat stools had been used for their intended purpose. Everywhere Florean looked, disorder and chaos reigned, quite the opposite of the bright, clean, orderly shop his parents ran.

He sighed and walked further into the room, almost tripping over a brand new trunk sitting in the middle of an aisle. Inlaid into the lid was the name _Elisabeth Ollivander_. Florean grabbed a handle and floundered under the weight for a moment.

_This is heavier than my trunk. What the hell did that tiny little girl put in here? Boulders?_

"Ah-ah-ah-ahchoooo!" came a sneeze from two aisles over. "Ahchoo! Ahchoo! Ahchoo! Ahchoo!"

Florean popped his head out into the main area of the shop to see a head of wild black hair bob over a pile of wand boxes. He chuckled as he heard a mutter from the direction of the small child.

"Five. Always in groupings of five. Why would that be? What is significant for the number of five? I don't understand-"

The young man chuckled and interrupted as he ran his fingers through his red-blond hair. "I think it has less to do with the number itself and more to do with the amount of dust in the shop. When was the last time Ollivander cleaned in here?"

"Florean? Is that you? I didn't think that you were showing me around the Alley again today. There is something important about today, but I don't quite remember…" The small eleven year old looked up at Florean as she popped out from between two stacks of empty wand boxes. Catching her toe, she started to fall forward, catching herself on one of the stacks. It teetered over her head, threatening to dump its upper layers onto the child.

Florean eyed them, ready to snatch Elisabeth from where she stood if the boxes continued to waver. Smiling kindly at the confused girl, he gestured her over. "It's September 1st today."

Comprehension dawned in her stormy blue eyes. A frown set over her thin features. "Hogwarts."

"Come on, Elisabeth. You will love it there. It's much cooler than the Alley." He poked her side.

Refusing to giggle, she rubbed her toe into the ground, creating a dusty ploom. "I…. I'm…" She paused, then said quietly, "I've barely been here for three months; I don't want to leave again."

He knelt down to her level. "You will be back here soon, silly. Besides, the Hogwarts Library is far superior to Flourish and Blotts. So many more books." A merchant's son at heart, he added, "You don't even have to pay for them."

"Really?" A shy smile slipped onto her face.

"Really. And you can use magic there with that new wand Ollivander created just for you."

At the mention of her new master, Elizabeth's mood dropped again. "What if he finds he likes living without me? Likes not having to worry about a child?"

An opening door causing a cascade of falling boxes interrupted the teenage boy's reassurances to the contrary. Gerrick Ollivander, already mostly white haired and as thin as a rail, wedged the door to the back room a bit wider before slipping into the shop. "Florean Fortesque? A wand of chestnut from the Appalachians of the United States and the heartstring of a particularly ancient Swedish Shortsnout, if I remember correctly. What are you doing with my apprentice today?"

"You asked me to grab her on my way to the Hogwarts Express, sir." Rolling his eyes at the forgetfulness of the Ollivander family, he continued, "Elisabeth doesn't want to go."

Both man and boy watched as she shrunk down on herself, staring at the fingers she'd interlaced in front of herself. She mumbled unintelligibly under her breath.

Ollivander barked a hoarse laugh, then crossed the room to stand above both children. "Well, she's got to go. I can't teach her to manage the magic of wand components until she can at least manage her own magic. I haven't had a viable apprentice since the forties when Elizabeth's Uncle Thomas showed aptitude. Chose Quidditch over wands, the crazy man…"

Florean stood up, internally chuckling at the elderly man. _I wonder why Thomas Ollivander did_ that_… No _reasonable_ reason to give up a career in wand creation for screaming fans, the Hall of Fame, and free drinks at any bar…Of course not…_

Shaking himself, Florean saw Elizabeth start to look up at her distant relative. Words started tumbling out of her mouth. "You'll let me come back here? You won't decide you like the quiet the shop had before I arrived? You will-"

"That's why you didn't want to go?" the master wandmaker chuckled and rubbed the girl's head. Kindly he sank down to her eyelevel. "You always have a place here. It's rather nice having another person in this shop. Gives it some life, I'd say. Life, yes… Say, is that the Gregorovitch creation that idiot March wants me to repair?" He snagged the offending wand off the floor a foot away and lifted it to his eyes. With a sudden passionate fury, he stabbed the wand at a shelf. The wand dribbled a sickly yellow spark. "See this, girl? This is a mixture of niffler fur and young vine. Inferior ingredients for a wand; the niffler doesn't have almost any magic of its own and none of its magic is even stored in the fur. And the vine, it practically weeps sap it is so immature! 'Not working properly-' Of COURSE it won't work properly! It barely has a spark of magic. Why she wants it fixed, not a clue. She's an aspen girl, she is. Perhaps with a dragon heartstring of some sort- No! Maple!"

Ollivander continued his rambling lecture, staring so intently at the wand and its imperfections he didn't see the fascinated smile break across his apprentice's face. Shoving her mass of floating inky hair behind her, she leaned in closer to the wand and started asking questions to her master. Florean grinned at the pair, so clearly matched in enthusiasm on the obscure topic.

Laying a hand on the tiny girl's head, he broke in to the conversation apologetically. "I am sorry, Master Ollivander, but the train will be leaving without us at this rate. We," he gestured at Elisabeth and himself before continuing, "also have to stop at my parent's ice cream parlor to grab my trunk before we floo from Tom's to the Express."

Ollivander looked at him sharply for a moment and blinked in surprise, clearly forgetting the presence of another person in the shop, before abruptly standing up. "Alright then. Safe journey." With a pat of his apprentice's shoulder, his glance returned to the wand in his hands. A muttered, "Shoddy creation," were the last words heard from Gerrick Ollivander as he deftly avoided the chaos of the shop and slid back into the adjoining room. It was clear from the attention refocused on the wand that the two still in the shop had already been forgotten.

"Damn," Florean breathed.

Elisabeth looked at him in curiosity.

With an embarrassed smile and an internal smack for forgetting about young ears, he explained, "I'd forgotten how easily absorbed he is." With a shake of his head, he grabbed the handle of the girl's trunk. "Let's go, shall we?"

_**AN: That's all for now. I originally started the real story with this, but it was suggested that I actually open with the main character… Stupid logic. That story should be published in three-four month's depending on if I get into this one engineering firm for a summer internship. We'll see...  
**_


End file.
